Tolkien metal is actually a thing. For those that haven’t come across it prior to now, it’s a subgenre of black metal that’s supposedly more atmospheric and ambient with lyrics entirely based around Tolkien’s works. Summoning are the forerunners of the genre, but it looks like they have a little competition in the shape of Serbian band Númenor.
Sometimes you come across an album that’s just so beautifully packaged that you need to hear what’s at the very heart of it.
(Númenor’s debut full length) hit me in just that way. “Opus Draconis” made an entrance that I can only describe as enchanting and by the time “The Eternal Champion” galloped in followed by the charge of “The Hour of the Dragon” I was shamelessly hooked. From start to finish, there’s not a misstep as Númenor skillfully blends their quirky symphonies with black metal and larger-than-life power metal anthems. There’s a lot happening and it’s nothing short of delightful. After being so enamoured by
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Begins with a big-sounding introduction similar in direction to Frosttide’s “Winter’s Call” – it’s doused in atmosphere and escalates quickly, drawing you into the unfolding story. As the “Intro” concludes you’re rushed speedily into “Dragonheart” which hits you with the theatre of Luca Turilli’s Rhapsody (
) the speedy battle against time of Wintersun, the deathy rasps of Kalmah and the blackened heart of Carach Angren. The range of vocal styles makes the track a treat, from Andjela Isic who plays the sweet-sounding beauty to Despot Marko Miranović’s gruff blackened beast, contrasted by Željko Jovanović’s theatrical cleans, there’s more than a little of everything here and it all effortlessly combines. Some might say the theatrics and narration are cheaply tossed about, dripping with too much accent, but they’d be wrong.
The remainder of the album, barring “Prelude I” and ‘Prelude II” continues on in the same fashion as “Dragonheart.” They’re packed with Srđan ‘Sirius’ Branković’s bombastic and melodic guitar riffs, quirky and made-for-the-stage Magnus Karlsson sized guitar solos reeking of dexterity wrapped in Mladen Gošić and Bálint Kemény’s pretty sounding keyboard orchestrations. The songs, despite having so much going on within them, move quickly and don’t overstay their welcome. In addition, they have the accessibility and fist-pumping easy-listening attitude of a hard rock anthem, so much so that they quickly become earworms. Don’t be the least bit surprised if you’re sitting at your desk and burst out in song, piping “The age of darkness and fire and ice, signs and omens shine so bright, the prince with silver hand came from the light” at the top of your lungs – that was just “the Prince in the Scarlet Robe” running fleetingly through your mind and “The Oath of Feanor” won’t be far behind.
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Becomes disjointed in in the inclusion of “Prelude I” and “Prelude II” and their associated breaks between tracks. Let me start by saying that on their own, neither of these preludes are bad – in fact it’s quite the opposite, they’re beautiful. But, as they’re positioned, they break the momentum achieved by the triumphal moments preceding them. It’s tough to say they’re necessary and at best, they should have been shortened and recorded as the introductions to “The Prince and the Scarlet Robe” and “Bane of Durin” respectively. Neither “The Prince…” nor “Bane…” come across as excessively long tracks without them and probably wouldn’t have seemed much longer with an additional minute or so prettiness tacked on.
Production suits the varied style of the music. It often reminds me of the warm and epic style used on Luca Turilli’s Rhapsody (
), the main difference being a light buzz applied to the guitarwork from time to time that becomes oddly endearing. My gripes are few and far between on
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And fans of the band should be pleased with their consistency. As a whole this album’s been a fun listen and I’ve enjoyed spinning it almost exclusively this past week. Once again, Númenor brought their fantastical a-game! [There’s no winning here. No matter how I start this review, it’s inevitably going to be overshadowed by the fact that there’s a picture of a dead baby sitting right next to this paragraph. Numenorean try to rationalize their artwork by explaining that it represents the album’s concept of loss and ‘longing for what humans will never achieve, ’ which may be the ‘innocence of a child, ’ and that child is freed from ever experiencing the ‘pain and sorrow’ of adulthood because death – blah blah blah. Look, I have no problem with pretentious concepts in post-black metal, but trying to justify your dead baby artwork is like saying you weren’t cheating on your girlfriend, you just tripped and fell on top of her roommate while you were naked. It’s a losing game, and rather than getting caught in it, let’s just move on and focus on
But instead of a dull description of the five tracks and 44 minutes of Fen-like black metal on this Canadian quintet’s debut, let’s do something else. Take out a blank sheet of paper, draw a five-by-five square grid, and write one post-black cliche in each square. Ready? Good, because it’s time for POST-BLACK BINGO! Pressing play: ambient intro followed by Alcesty clean picking! Sudden eruption of whooshing guitars! Faint, echoey rasping! Shoehorned acoustic sections with distant screaming in the background! Soft parts with ample delay-pedal effects! Impending blastbeat fade-ins! ‘Ooohing’ female vocals! Obligatory mid-album instrumental! Piercing leads and shoegazey melodies! Post-rock interludes that abruptly explode into blasting! Esoteric personal lyrics with at least one mention of the ocean! And finally, false endings that lead to another three minutes of acoustic noodling and one last surge of wavering riffs before the end! Congratulations to the winner and sorry for whoever put ‘awkward spoken word section’ in their center block [
Harvests nearly every post-black trope from Agalloch to Addaura, it’s not altogether a bad record. Penultimate track “Devour” in particular showcases some excellent melodies and guitar-work: the fuzzy lead about 8 minutes in is downright lovely, as is the rapidly picked, reverb-soaked riff at about 90 seconds (though I swear I’ve heard it somewhere before). Likewise, instrumental “Shoreless” features pleasantly reflective,
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Esque clean picking, while “Thirst” introduces a terrific Panopticon-esque riff in its back half. To match the mood, the guitarists use a host of different tones, from silky smooth to fuzzy and distorted, reverb-soaked to glassy and clear. With all five members contributing vocals, there’s plenty of diversity there as well, from rasps, deep bellows, distant wordless screams, and even what sounds like coughing at one point.
Feel like it could have been the best post-black record of 2016, at times it feels like Numenorean are trying to cobble together too many ideas for their own good. The opening title track feels particularly disjointed, flip-flopping between acoustic ambiance and black metal blasting no less than five times throughout its 9 minute runtime – the result being, of course, that all those good ideas mean little when they don’t have time to grow or breathe. Closer “Laid Down” suffers from similar songwriting A.D.D., albeit to a lesser degree, and while the other songs fare better, it doesn’t help that some of the guitar-work – particularly the cleanly-picked sections – sound like the slightest variations on melodies we’ve all heard before in this subgenre.
Is that it comes across as emotionally overwrought, even cheesy at times, and seems a bit disingenuous in the way it cherry picks from superior albums. While a surprisingly riffy and spontaneous record for the genre, that actually works to its detriment, as
Angry Metal Guy's Top Ten(ish) O' 2019
Is often unable to hammer its abundance of ideas into fully cohesive, enjoyable compositions. Even the production – while nicely layering the hazy guitars and crisp drumming – is pretty well smooshed. Sure, it’s a pleasant overall listen, even stellar at points, but in the end this is an example of a tiny blip in an overcrowded scene that will probably not be remembered at year’s end, only to be rediscovered and heralded as a forgotten classic when Dying Fetus is playing on classic rock radio in 20 years.
And fans of the band should be pleased with their consistency. As a whole this album’s been a fun listen and I’ve enjoyed spinning it almost exclusively this past week. Once again, Númenor brought their fantastical a-game! [There’s no winning here. No matter how I start this review, it’s inevitably going to be overshadowed by the fact that there’s a picture of a dead baby sitting right next to this paragraph. Numenorean try to rationalize their artwork by explaining that it represents the album’s concept of loss and ‘longing for what humans will never achieve, ’ which may be the ‘innocence of a child, ’ and that child is freed from ever experiencing the ‘pain and sorrow’ of adulthood because death – blah blah blah. Look, I have no problem with pretentious concepts in post-black metal, but trying to justify your dead baby artwork is like saying you weren’t cheating on your girlfriend, you just tripped and fell on top of her roommate while you were naked. It’s a losing game, and rather than getting caught in it, let’s just move on and focus on
But instead of a dull description of the five tracks and 44 minutes of Fen-like black metal on this Canadian quintet’s debut, let’s do something else. Take out a blank sheet of paper, draw a five-by-five square grid, and write one post-black cliche in each square. Ready? Good, because it’s time for POST-BLACK BINGO! Pressing play: ambient intro followed by Alcesty clean picking! Sudden eruption of whooshing guitars! Faint, echoey rasping! Shoehorned acoustic sections with distant screaming in the background! Soft parts with ample delay-pedal effects! Impending blastbeat fade-ins! ‘Ooohing’ female vocals! Obligatory mid-album instrumental! Piercing leads and shoegazey melodies! Post-rock interludes that abruptly explode into blasting! Esoteric personal lyrics with at least one mention of the ocean! And finally, false endings that lead to another three minutes of acoustic noodling and one last surge of wavering riffs before the end! Congratulations to the winner and sorry for whoever put ‘awkward spoken word section’ in their center block [
Harvests nearly every post-black trope from Agalloch to Addaura, it’s not altogether a bad record. Penultimate track “Devour” in particular showcases some excellent melodies and guitar-work: the fuzzy lead about 8 minutes in is downright lovely, as is the rapidly picked, reverb-soaked riff at about 90 seconds (though I swear I’ve heard it somewhere before). Likewise, instrumental “Shoreless” features pleasantly reflective,
Diablo 4 Every Class Suitability For Pvp Ranked.jpg
Esque clean picking, while “Thirst” introduces a terrific Panopticon-esque riff in its back half. To match the mood, the guitarists use a host of different tones, from silky smooth to fuzzy and distorted, reverb-soaked to glassy and clear. With all five members contributing vocals, there’s plenty of diversity there as well, from rasps, deep bellows, distant wordless screams, and even what sounds like coughing at one point.
Feel like it could have been the best post-black record of 2016, at times it feels like Numenorean are trying to cobble together too many ideas for their own good. The opening title track feels particularly disjointed, flip-flopping between acoustic ambiance and black metal blasting no less than five times throughout its 9 minute runtime – the result being, of course, that all those good ideas mean little when they don’t have time to grow or breathe. Closer “Laid Down” suffers from similar songwriting A.D.D., albeit to a lesser degree, and while the other songs fare better, it doesn’t help that some of the guitar-work – particularly the cleanly-picked sections – sound like the slightest variations on melodies we’ve all heard before in this subgenre.
Is that it comes across as emotionally overwrought, even cheesy at times, and seems a bit disingenuous in the way it cherry picks from superior albums. While a surprisingly riffy and spontaneous record for the genre, that actually works to its detriment, as
Angry Metal Guy's Top Ten(ish) O' 2019
Is often unable to hammer its abundance of ideas into fully cohesive, enjoyable compositions. Even the production – while nicely layering the hazy guitars and crisp drumming – is pretty well smooshed. Sure, it’s a pleasant overall listen, even stellar at points, but in the end this is an example of a tiny blip in an overcrowded scene that will probably not be remembered at year’s end, only to be rediscovered and heralded as a forgotten classic when Dying Fetus is playing on classic rock radio in 20 years.
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